The German botanist Carl Correns is primarily remembered as one of several biologists who simultaneously, but independently rediscovered Gregor Mendel's laws of inheritance. Like Hugo de Vries (1848-1935) and Erik von Tschermak (1871-1962), Correns had been conducting breeding studies that led to Mendel's ratios and to the papers that Mendel had published in the 1860s. After Mendel published his work, developments in the study of cell division, fertilization, and the behavior of subcellular structures had established a new framework of ideas that could explain the Mendelian ratios. Moreover, new ideas about the evolution probably contributed the approach that Correns and other brought to the study of heredity. Correns acknowledged that the task of discovering Mendel's laws in 1900 was much simpler than it had been in the 1860s.

Correns, who was born in Munich, was the only child of a Swiss mother and a German father. While a student...